Oxford Circus

The recent form makes for difficult reading. Looking at the last six races — with finishes of 10th, well back in the field, a blank, then 8th, 14th, 6th, and 12th — there is no obvious upward curve here. The 6th-place finish stands out as the closest Oxford Circus has come to threatening the leaders in this sequence, but the performances either side of it suggest that may have been a good day rather than a turning point. Raced just yesterday, this is a horse very much in the thick of its season right now.

What gives the story a more optimistic angle is the yard behind it. Denis Gerard Hogan trains out of Cloughjordan in County Tipperary and has sent out 56 winners already this season — that is a yard firing on all cylinders. A trainer with that kind of output clearly knows how to place horses to win, which raises an interesting question: what is Hogan waiting for with Oxford Circus? Whether it is a case of finding the right race, the right conditions, or simply letting the horse mature, you would back Hogan to have a plan. Sometimes horses take longer to click than others, and a busy, successful yard like this does not tend to keep running a horse for the fun of it.

Oxford Circus has time on its side at four years old, and with a trainer in such strong form, the first win may not be as far away as the bare record suggests. But it will need to find some significant improvement on what we have seen lately to prove that right.